John Cowans

General Sir John Steven Cowans, (11 March 1862 – 16 April 1921) was a senior British Army officer who served as Quartermaster-General to the Forces from 1912 to 1919, covering the period of the First World War.

Educated at Burney's Academy at Gosport and the Royal Military College, Sandhurst, Cowans was commissioned into the Rifle Brigade in 1881. He graduated from the Staff College, Camberley, in 1892 and became a Deputy Assistant Quartermaster General at Army Headquarters in 1898. In this role he organised the deployment of troops to the Second Boer War. He became Assistant Quartermaster-General of 2nd Division at Aldershot Command in 1903, and went on to become Director of Staff Duties and Training at Army Headquarters in India in 1907. He commanded the Presidency Brigade in Calcutta from 1908 to 1910, when he returned to the United Kingdom as Director-General of the Territorial Force.

Cowans became Quartermaster-General to the Forces in 1912, and in this capacity he was responsible for finding accommodation and supplies for more than a million newly enlisted servicemen at the start of the First World War. He was the only member of the Army Council to retain his position throughout the entire war.

Early life

John Steven Cowans was born in Woodbank, St Cuthbert Without, Carlisle, on 11 March 1862, the oldest of three sons (one of whom, Ernest Arnold, later became a brigadier general) of John Cowans, an engineer who co-founded the Carlisle firm of Cowans, Sheldon & Co., and his wife Jeannie (née Steven). Cowans was always known as "Jack".